New York’s huge Gay Pride fest launches with star-studded concert

 

New York’s highly anticipated World Pride festivities officially opened Wednesday with a benefit concert hosted by performer Whoopi Goldberg and featuring headliner Cyndi Lauper.

 

The event at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center arena launches days of celebrations including more concerts, exhibitions, movie screenings, theatre shows and workshops as the city pays homage to those who took part in the 1969 Stonewall riots, a week-long protest against police harassment of the New York gay community at the time.

 

Ticket proceeds from Wednesday’s concert will go to three New York-based organizations supporting LGBTQ rights in the city.

 

Also set to perform are singers Chaka Khan and Ciara as well as Billy Porter, known for his showstopping red carpet looks and role on “Pose,” a television series about the primarily Black and Latino underground drag ball scene of the 1980s and early 1990s.

US actress Whoopi Goldberg performs onstage during the opening ceremony of WorldPride 2019 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, on June 26, 2019. – New York’s highly anticipated World Pride festivities officially opened with a benefit concert hosted by performer Whoopi Goldberg and featuring headliner Cyndi Lauper. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)

 

US performer Billy Porter performs onstage during the opening ceremony of WorldPride 2019 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, on June 26, 2019. – New York’s highly anticipated World Pride festivities officially opened with a benefit concert hosted by performer Whoopi Goldberg and featuring headliner Cyndi Lauper. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)

On Friday, a large crowd will gather outside Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn where on June 28, 1969 hundreds of gay and transgender people pushed back against the latest police raid on the establishment, sparking six days of unrest.

 

The weekend celebrations will feature concerts by Madonna and Grace Jones, winding up with a giant World Pride Parade on Fifth Avenue. It will be the sixth edition of World Pride, which began in Rome in 2000 and brought together droves of people from across the world.

 

JUNE 26: Rainbow pride flags fly outside the Stonewall Inn as crowds begin to gather to celebrate Pride Month on June 26, 2019 in New York City. Thousands of members of the LGBTQ community have been gathering outside of the historic gay bar in Greenwich Village to celebrate the 50th anniversary of riots at the inn, which many people consider the birth of the modern gay rights movement in America. Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP

New York’s Gay Pride is regularly one of the largest such events globally, but for this year’s milestone anniversary, authorities expect an additional two to three million visitors to attend.

 

Source: Agence France-Presse

Read more...